AboutWelcome to Free Software Daily (FSD). FSD is a hub for news and articles by and for the free and open source community. FSD is a community driven site where members of the community submit and vote for the stories that they think are important and interesting to them. Click the "About" link to read more...

The UK Government Service Design Manual says to "Use open source software in preference to proprietary or closed source alternatives, in particular for operating systems, networking software, Web servers, databases and programming languages." The policy is in place to move forward.

In a huge win for open standards, free and open source software and the public, the long-awaited UK government definition of open standards has come down firmly on the side of royalty-free, not FRAND. The UK government list seven principles as defining an open standard.

When it comes to Free Software and Open Standards, the UK has long lagged way behind other countries. There were a few policies that sounded good on paper, but that’s exactly where they stayed. This may be finally changing. The UK Cabinet Office has issued a "procurement policy notice" (.pdf) that is, well, surprising. In a good way.

In the United States, the White House has led the march towards open source and free software by switching the http://www.whitehouse.gov/ website to the Drupal content management system. The government of the United Kingdom has decided to follow their lead.

In an effort to cut costs, British Prime Minister David Cameron has called on state officials to submit proposals on how to save the government money. The newly published list includes migrating entirely from Microsoft products to Linux and other open source software

As the mission of the Free Software Foundation is to promote computer user freedom and to defend the rights of all free software users, they also have to defend against ill-conceived and misguided laws.